


greater than gravity

by Sorrel



Series: anywhere you're gonna be, that's where I wanna be [2]
Category: Jupiter Ascending (2015)
Genre: F/M, Family of Choice, Non-Traditional Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, aww yeah communication skills, extremely handwaved science, two crazy kids in some serious like
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-22
Updated: 2018-01-22
Packaged: 2019-03-07 23:26:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,834
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13445640
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sorrel/pseuds/Sorrel
Summary: Howdoyou go from floating in space with the world at your feet to stepping back into the bones of your old life?  It's one thing to kiss a man at the end of the world, or even to hold his hand at the top of the world and picture your happily ever after - but it's something else entirely, Jupiter knows, to stand on your own shaky two feet and actually try to make it come true.Or: Jupiter Jones, from one end to a brand-new beginning.





	greater than gravity

**Author's Note:**

> Title from ["Did I Say That Out Loud?"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gIhFrzZPCfg) by Barenaked Ladies. (Ditto series name.) This story was written heavily under its influence, with Cary Rae Jepsen's ["I Really Like You"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qV5lzRHrGeg) as a _very_ close second.
> 
> This takes place directly after [the instinct to your charm](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3677403), and honestly will probably not make a lot of sense without reading that first.

Jupiter Jones floats in the empty space above her planet and thinks, _Yeah, I could definitely get used to this._

Admittedly, she could probably do without the stuff that directly preceded it. Kidnapping, attempted homicide, kidnapping again, more attempted homicide, burning buildings, lots of freefall, _more attempted homicide,_ clinging desperately to Caine's back as he swan-dived through a closing warp portal: all things Jupiter intends to avoid in the near _and_ far future. No thank you.

But this part - the whole planet spread out in front of her, Caine's hand in hers - this part is pretty damn good.

"Hold tight, your majesty," Commander Percadium's voice comes through her helmet, steady and comfortingly British. _What's up with all the British accents in space?_ she wonders. _Actually, for that matter, what's with everyone speaking English in the first place?_ "There's been a bit of damage to the ship so the transit beam is taking some time to come back online, but it shouldn't be longer than five minutes or so."

"That's fine," Jupiter says, probably a little too loud; how can you tell when you're talking into a helmet speaker? It's weird. "I can wait."

"Very good, your majesty."

She clings to Caine's hand, kicks her feet idly into the open space of nothing, and grins over at him. He's got a wry smile on his face, almost like his sense of the ridiculous is kicking in the same way hers is. Well, probably not the _same_ way - at least some of this craziness is everyday life for him - but she refuses to believe that a day like today comes along too often for _anyone,_ even a space-wolf-ex-soldier-turned-convict-bounty-hunter-with-a-heart-of-gold. Plus there's, you know, the part where she kissed him earlier, when she figured they were probably still both going to die. That's got to be at least a little out of the ordinary, right?

And he kissed her back, can't forget about that. Very important.

"I did hear you say you got my family out, didn't I?" she says, and Caine nods, looking a little distressed.

"Yes. I'm sorry I didn't come after you, but I couldn't find you after you fell and I wasn't even sure you were alive and your family was right there, so I thought-"

"You thought exactly right," she interrupts, and gives his hand a squeeze. These space-suit things are so thin she can actually feel his grip, though admittedly not much else- sort of like a very thick pair of her scrubbing gloves. She's still boggling a bit over the way the thing just vacuum-packed over her with the touch of a button. Space has, so far, turned out to be very weird. "You thought just exactly right, Caine, okay? I mean, you saved my _family._ That's a big frickin' deal."

"I'm glad," Caine sighs, and tugs on her hand a little, reels her in against him. She complies happily, lets him tuck his arm around her shoulders and butts her helmeted head into place at his shoulder, and even though they're both in space suits (because they're _in space)_ and she can't really feel anything, it's still probably the most romantic moment of her life.

"So, uh," she says, hoping like hell that she's on a private channel between her and Caine and that the entire bridge crew of the _Defiant_ isn't listening in right now, "you definitely did kiss me back down there, right? I didn't imagine that?"

"Mmm," Caine says, which isn't really an answer, but Jupiter decides to take it as encouragement and forges on.

"I mean, you did sort of break a planet getting me out of the evil clutches of my son from a previous life, and that's sort of a big statement in a general sense, but you also clearly have a savior complex so I'm trying not to take it personally but considering the fact that you kissed me back I can't help but see it as a hopeful sign, you know, romantically speaking."

"Mmm," Caine says again, and this is worrying, because Caine is the quiet sort, fine, but he's not _that_ quiet. Jupiter keeps a hold of his hand - because bull _shit_ is she going to let herself go floating off into space after she's come so far - and twists around, trying to get a look at his face.

It's very still. And very pale. And his eyes are closed.

Jupiter starts to get a bad feeling.

"Caine!" she says, _definitely_ too loud this time, but he doesn't react. "Caine, wake up!"

Nothing. _Breathe, Jupiter, breathe._ Maybe her comms just aren't working? Maybe he can't hear her. She brings up her free hand and knocks on the faceplate of his helmet, but he doesn't stir. A second knock, harder, causes his head to loll backwards.

_Okay, now you can panic._

"Hey!" she shouts, suddenly rescinding her earlier hope that the bridge isn't listening in. "Hey, can anyone hear me! Help!"

"Your majesty," Phylo's voice comes in, a moment later, still steady, still calm, but maybe a liiiittle breathless underneath. _Oh great, you panicked the British Riker. Well done, you._ "What's the matter?"

Okay, so they weren't listening before, now they are, she can work with this. "It's Caine," she says, her voice small. "He's not moving. I think he passed out."

"Oh dear," Phylo responds, _extremely_ British-ly, and probably not intended to go out over the mic, judging by the way he immediately clears his throat after. "And you've attempted to wake him?"

"Oh boy have I," she says. She clings tighter to his hand, all-too-aware that he's no longer gripping back. "He was responding a minute ago, but now he seems to be completely out of it."

"That's fine, it's going to be all right," Phylo says, as soothingly as he can. "It's likely just a reaction to the sargorn venom."

She swallows hard. "That doesn't sound good."

"It's not immediately life-threatening, your majesty. Our engineers are working on the transit beam as fast as they can. We're assembling a medical team on standby for when he comes in. I'm sure Lieutenant Wise will be fine."

"He definitely does not look fine!" The space looming around them, marvelous and exciting just moments ago, is now nothing but dead, empty, and terrifying. "Oh god, what if he dies while we're out here?"

"Your majesty, he is not going to die."

"But what if he gets worse? What if he gets worse and I can't do anything about it? Will I just have to float here and hold his hand while he dies and I-"

"Take a breath, please, your majesty," Phylo tells her, but the spacesuit seems to close in around her chest and throat, and what if she _can't_ breathe? How much air is in these things? _What if she runs out of air?_

"Your majesty," she hears, definitely worried now, and then, "Your majesty!" but she can't answer, can't take a breath, can't do anything.

"Oh for bloody-" a different voice says, and then, suddenly: "Jupiter!"

"Yes," she says reflexively, and it breaks the moment enough that she can take a breath. There's an audible sigh of relief from multiple people, and her brain kicks in enough to recognize the second voice: worried, exasperated, fond. Stinger. "Yes, okay, sorry, I'm here, I'm here, I'm good."

"Of course you are," Stinger says roughly, and then, belatedly, adds, "Your majesty."

She has to laugh. She can't help it. "And you were doing so well there, for a minute."

He chuckles. She can faintly hear other voices behind him, and realizes that he's probably on the bridge with the rest, and more than likely just grabbed the mic or whatever from Phylo. She hopes that won't get him in trouble or anything. How does a 'Marshall' fit into the chain of command, anyway? Is he still technically under arrest? Something to look into.

"You're going to have to get used to it sooner or later, you know."

"I vote later. Can it be later?" She forces herself to take another deep breath, feels her rib cage expand and collapse, tastes nothing but stale air. She wants to be out of this suit so badly she'd cry if her tear ducts weren't in a paralyzed state of panic like the rest of her. "But only later for stupid titles. Not later for getting us back onto the ship. Sooner would be better for that."

"The lads are working as fast as they can," Stinger promises her, "and your boy isn't going to die on you, majesty, because he's too goat-swiving stubborn to let himself be bumped off by some fucking hormone-riddled lizard with an overbite."

His cursing is obscurely reassuring. Everyone's always tried to hard to be _polite_ since she became space royalty, but Stinger's really bad at it, even when he actually tries. She appreciates that about him. "Caine's not stubborn," she says, "he's... determined."

"Aye, that's the nice word for it," Stinger says, low and affectionate, and she sighs, paddles her feet in the empty nothing above Earth.

"He's not going to die."

"Not a chance," Stinger says reassuringly. "He'd be too embarrassed. And who wouldn't? Sorry excuse for a Legionnaire that couldn't take out a bloody personal guard. No training, those lot. Very full of themselves."

"But Caine's not in the Legion anymore. I thought that was the whole point of this mess."

"Once a Legionnaire, always a Legionnaire," Stinger says solidly. "And the 'whole point' of this mess is that your majesty is very important to a great number of people. Caine just got himself caught in the middle."

Jupiter swallows hard and asks, in a small voice, "But what if I don't want to be important?"

It's a big question. It's sort of _the_ big question, the one she's been asking herself ever since the moment she looked out from a cloud of bees to see Stinger on his knees in the dirt. It's fitting that she's asking him for the answer now; sort of circular. Nicely metaphorical. Sometimes life really _does_ align like a literary trope, if your life gets crazy enough.

But Stinger just says, "It doesn't have to mean anything you don't want it to mean," his voice low and kind, and she laughs abruptly, because, well-

"You're a terrible liar."

"People keep telling me that," Stinger says agreeably.

"But thanks for trying."

"All part of the service."

"The service sucks. I want a refund."

Stinger snorts, but he falls silent after, and she can't bear that, finds herself staring over at Caine in twitchy, jerky motions. He's so _still._ She's seen him be still any number of times - most of the time, even - but it's a watchful sort of stillness, like he could explode into violent motion at any moment. Now he's just- not moving. It's not the same thing at all.

"How much longer?"

"Just a few minutes," Stinger promises. "Almost there."

"...all right."

It's just that space is so _big._ There's nothing in it, it's just- well, space. Empty, and cold, and she's out here all by her lonesome, really, no Caine to look after her, and really he just needs someone to look after him right now, and she is _so not capable._ She's great at making cheap, hot food when someone's down with the flu, or playing the crazy-eyed friend if some guy won't leave you alone in the bar, and she's always willing to hold your hand and pet your back and say soothing things while you're throwing up, and she's a fucking champion at the cheer-up blowjob, but this is way, way beyond her. Caine is probably _dying,_ right this very moment, no matter what the good commander told her, and what is she good for? Nothing. Absolutely nothing, that's what.

It's only when she hears Stinger sigh in her ear and say, "Oh, _sweetheart,_ " that she realizes she's started crying. Apparently her tear ducts aren't too paralyzed, after all.

"Please talk to me, Stinger," she says, and hates how small her voice sounds, the hitch it gets from crying. "Please."

There's a moment of hesitation when all she can think about is how stupid that must sound, how small and weak and terrible she is, and she's not even the one who's injured, what the hell must Stinger think of her, what kind of fucking queen is she supposed to be when she can't even keep her goddamn cool when she's already safe-

-and then there's a click, and the low murmur of voices behind Stinger fades away, and his voice comes to her ear even clearer, more intimate. He must have disconnected from the bridge feed and is on his own phone-implant thing. "What about?" he says, a little hesitantly, but game, and she takes a deep breath, and another, and another, before she can say,

"Tell me about your daughter."

"Kiza?" Stinger says, surprised, and she nods before realizing he can't see her.

"Yeah. I mean, I only got to meet her for like, five minutes and she seemed really nice before the whole royal thing happened. What's she like?"

"Ah, she's one of a kind, my girl is. She's been a holy terror since she was just a little bit of a thing, runs rings around her old da and anyone who else who gets too close."

"That sounds nice," Jupiter says wistfully. Her own family loves her, she knows it and even believes it, but they're more likely to describe her as _too forward_ or _head in the clouds_ or _why won't you just *pay attention,* Jupiter, it's only your life here, for god's sake._ "What does she do?"

"Do?"

"I mean, for a living. Is she a Marshall, too?"

"Bit young for the post," he says, amused. Very faintly, she can hear the weird _thump-jingle_ of his own set of grav-boots on the grating of the ship's hallways. She's gotten very familiar with that sound in the last few days. "Not that it stops her from poking her nose into my work all the time. I think she might do more of my paperwork than I do, truth be told. No, she just finished her secondaries a year back. Remotely, of course, but the holos are near as good as the real thing."

"Secondaries are like high school?"

"Closest comparison, yeah. She took her sweet time with it, but it's not like she's on a schedule, with us so far out. And it was a devil of a time getting her to sit still for it. She's always been more interested in being outside than sitting at a desk trying to learn warp-core mathematics."

Jupiter can sympathize with that. Warp-core _technology_ sounds awesome, but anything math-related? No. She thinks one of her mother's greatest disappointments in life is how truly, utterly terrible she is at anything involving numbers.

"The garden is hers, you know. I've been known to kill plants by watering them, but she's got a knack for it. We pay one of the locals to handle the fields, but all of the stuff around the house she planted. She's got a thing for wildflowers."

"It's beautiful," says Jupiter, who can't think about Stinger's home without remembering the moment in his front yard, when the swarm of bees around her coalesced in the dizzying spiral that followed her every movement, a dance, almost, straight out of some cartoon she would have watched and loved as a kid. There was a lot of not-so-great stuff that followed it - Caine going over all avoidant and unhappy, the weird formality from Stinger and Kiza, the full-scale assault that ended up with her getting knocked unconscious in a cornfield by something that sure as hell seemed like some kind of _sound cannon_ \- but she can't think about that moment with anything less than pure, unadulterated joy. It softens her voice when she says, "I bet the bees are happy."

"Ah, what do they know, they're bees," Stinger says dismissively, but she's sure that's a smile she can hear in his voice. " _I_ like gardens like the ones they have at the Academy, lots of neatly-trimmed hedges and flowers in boxes and proper lawns, all orderly and such, but what do I know. Apparently that's 'boring.'"

"It is boring," she informs him. "And the wildflowers are great. You should listen to your daughter. She's clearly the smart one."

"As if she'd ever let me do anything else," he sighs. There's a _whirr_ behind him, something she's pretty sure is the lift. _Where's he going,_ she wonders, but distantly. It doesn't really matter, as long as he doesn't leave her alone out here. "Although I think you might be giving her too much credit. I think she mostly just doesn't want to do the mowing."

"Which just goes to show that she's clearly the superior Apini," she returns, with the fervency of a girl who had to handle the ancient push-mower at Cousin Vassily's house every week for the length of the summer from ages eleven to nineteen, until Natya got old enough to take over. Vladie used to bitch that she got that chore and he got women's work like vacuuming, but Vladie burns if he so much as looks at direct sunlight, so. "Mowing sucks."

"Well, I'll be sure to let Kiza know that your majesty appreciates her design, then," Stinger says, and for the first time it doesn't bother her to hear him use that title. Maybe it's because of the situation, with his voice the only lifeline holding her steady besides her desperate grip on Caine's slack hand, or maybe it's just that he makes it sound like Caine does, like her being a royal is just as much of a joke as it actually is. Teasing rather than formal. "And then she'll lord it over me like she always does. You'd think she'd get tired of being right all the time, but apparently not."

"She sounds great," Jupiter sighs. She's never really had that many close female friends. Katherine's probably the closest thing she has, and Katherine is a _client -_ for all that she's friendly and tips well, Jupiter's not stupid enough to forget that she's the hired help. "I'm sorry I had to turn out to be a royal and make things weird."

"Don't ever be sorry for that," Stinger says, low and serious. "You're the best bloody thing that ever happened to-"

His voice cuts off, and she jerks, panic rumbling up in her chest. "Stinger?"

"Still here," he soothes a moment later, and she can faintly hear voices through his feed again. "Just made it down to the airlock. They're just about ready to get you onboard.."

She clings tighter to Caine's hand. "Really?"

"Just a minute longer. And they've got a med team standing by for Caine. They'll get him treated and he'll be up and following you about within the hour, like as not."

"And you're going to be there?"

"Of course," he says, no hesitation at all. "Couldn't drag me away."

"Good," she breathes, and closes her eyes. "Thanks."

"You don't need to thank me," he says, and she's going to break him of that urge, him and Caine both, if it's the last frickin' thing she does. Is _you're welcome_ so hard to say? Jeez.

"Your majesty," Phylo's voice cuts in. "Are you ready to come aboard now?"

" _So_ ready," she vows.

"Do you still have a hold on Lieutenant Wise?"

"Yeah, I didn't want him to, like- float away."

"That was very smart of your majesty. However, I do need you to let go of him now."

This only prompts her to hold tighter, of course. "What? Why?"

"The transit beam is damaged more greatly than expected, and will take some time to repair. So we're going to use the emergency transfer to teleport you onboard."

An immediate war takes place in Jupiter's brain. About half of her is going, _oh my god, I'm about to get *beamed on board,* holy shit it's like being in Star Trek for real,_ and the other half is pointing out dubiously that he said "emergency" transfer, and that if teleporting were that common, why would they use transit beams in the first place?

The second part wins. "That doesn't sound very safe. Can't you just, I don't know, pick us up in a shuttle or something?"

"The only vehicle we had capable of making that kind of fine maneuvers in vacuum was the zeroes, and unfortunately we are fresh out," Phylo says, a hint of irony in his voice. Oh, right, because Caine and Stinger kept crashing them. "I swear to you, it's perfectly safe. I wouldn't suggest it if I thought otherwise."

Oh god, oh god. "Stinger?"

"You'll be fine," Stinger says, his voice a low rumble of reassurance. "We've all done it before. Nobody lost any fingers or toes."

She swallows hard. Stinger _is_ a terrible liar. "Okay," she says, swallows again, convulsively. "I have to let go of Caine?"

"Just for a moment, your majesty," Phylo says gently. "Say, on the count of three?"

_I can do this,_ Jupiter tells herself. She looks over at Caine, so still, so pale. She has no way of knowing if he's even still breathing in there. "Okay."

"Very good. One, two, _three._ "

She peels her fingers free from Caine's, and kicks slightly to drift a couple feet away from him. "We're separate, go, please," she says, and a split second later, a beam of light so bright it's blinding hits her, and then she's nothing.

###### 

She comes back to awareness a moment later, with her feet blessedly on solid ground, and has about half a second to appreciate this turn of events before her knees decide that they're not down with this bullshit and promptly give out. She'd probably hit the floor like a sack of potatoes, except that strong hands catch her underneath her arms and lift her up, steadying her until her rebellious legs decide that they're going to cooperate after all.

She looks up and there's Stinger standing there in front of her, his hands still wrapped around the span of her ribcage, worry writ across his craggy face. "You okay?"

A crack of laughter bursts out of her. "I am so far from okay I don't even know where it is on the map," she confesses, "but I'm in one piece. Basically." She looks around. "Where's Caine?"

"Beamed him directly to the medbay," Stinger says, and squeezes one last time, reassuringly, before letting her go. Her knees consent to cooperate this time, and she merely sways a little, more from exhaustion than from anything else. Now that she's back in a gravity-rich environment, her various aches and pains are starting to make themselves known, very, very loudly.

"Here, love, you know how to get that thing off?"

"Not the slightest," she says, and blinks up at him. He's really quite tall. Not as tall as Caine, but definitely much taller than her. Of course, practically everybody is taller than her. "Um. Help?"

"Of course, just turn around- yeah, like that." He indicates the direction with a firm tap to her shoulder, and she obeys, limp and compliant and more, more than happy to hand herself over to somebody else for a bit. Even if it's someone that betrayed her once already in the last couple days, but- eh, Caine explained it, and she's too tired to hold a grudge right now. She likes Stinger, and her instincts say that he's trustworthy. Her instincts screamed at her about Titus but she ignored them, and look how _that_ turned out. Maybe it's not such a bad idea, to listen to her gut for a change.

With a few quick, impersonal gestures, he undoes the hidden catches of the suit, causing it to hiss like a boiling kettle as the pressurized air floods out. A moment later, it contracts off her body - holy shit that _tickles_ \- and back into the little walkman-sized pod that Caine had slapped against her chest in the first place.

She takes a deep breath, full of engine oil and stale air, and thinks that it's the best thing she's ever tasted.

When she turns back to face Stinger, he smiles down at her. "There you go, all gone. Better?"

" _So_ much. Thanks."

"You're welcome." He turns to toss the space-suit pod onto a nearby bench, and halfway through the gesture he goes very still, like videos she's seen of a hunting dog going on point. "You're hurt."

She blinks. Isn't that kind of a given, all things considered? "Well, yeah. My whole body is probably one entire bruise at this point, between the falling and the landing and the getting hit with a pipe-"

Stinger doesn't growl, not like she's heard Caine do when he's angry, but there's a noise coming from his chest that's probably a close cousin. Actually, it sounds sort of like a buzz. She has to stifle hysterical laughter.

"No, I mean I smell blood." He circles her swiftly till he's on her left side, and gently picks up her wrist in one calloused hand, turning it over to examine her forearm. The movement pulls at the cut, reminding her that it's there, and she stares down at it, a little dumbfounded. How had she forgotten that? Balem sliced her open like a stuck pig and she just _forgot?_

"This needs treatment."

"I'm guessing you're not exactly talking about stitches."

"No, because closing a wound by jabbing needles and thread through the nearby flesh is barbaric," Stinger says kindly, and undoes the catch at the cuff, folds the fabric gently away from the wound. He gives a sympathetic hiss. "Tell me one of the sargorn didn't give you this. One of you under from the venom is plenty."

She feels another flash of worry for Caine. _The medics have him now, and they have magic space medicine going for them. He'll be fine._ "No. Balem."

"Mad bastard," Stinger says, and tilts her wrist. She valiantly does her best not to wince. Now that he's made her aware of the injury, it's throbbing in time with her pulse, hot and angry.

"At least it's not bleeding anymore?"

"Yeah, the suit has clotting agents on the inner membrane," Stinger says absently. "Still needs closed. I don't think we need to trek down to the medbay, though. Give me a mo, I think they should have a half-decent medkit here if I just…"

He steadies her wrist in his left hand and reaches around her with his right, briefly pressing close so he can grab something off the bench behind her. He doesn't quite have Caine's bulk, but there's a pleasing solidity to him. He's also very, very warm.

Stinger comes back with little sealed pouch, which peels open with his teeth and braces on his thigh after putting one booted foot up to the bench. Her wrist he also rests on his knee, and he pulls a spray can out of the medical kit that looks like the one he used on Caine in his living room, days or eons ago, she's not even sure anymore. It feels cold on her skin when he sprays it carefully along the line of the cut, and then it itches _fiercely_ for a few moments while she has the stomach-crawling experience of watching her flesh fill in the bleeding hole and then seal together into new, pink skin. The itch fades away just after the healing is complete, leaving a tingling sensation sort of like the pins and needles after your foot has fallen asleep. Stinger pulls out a another, smaller packet that he rips open to reveal a wet-wipe, just the same as would be in any first-aid kit on Earth.

"Kinda low-tech, isn't it?" she asks, as he sets to wiping away the dried blood from her arm.

"Sometimes the simplest options are the right ones," he says, and rubs lightly to get at a particularly stubborn bit. "There. All set."

She flexes her wrist, and watches in fascination as the skin pulls smoothly, not a scar in sight, not even a hint of a pucker to show that the flesh had been rent only moments before. "I wonder if this stuff will ever get old."

"I can't speak to that, I'm afraid," he says, and turns away, packing away the medkit with a few swift motions. "Though I'm told that enough time will take care of just about anything."

"Time. Yeah." She thinks of the ancient madness in the depths of Balem's eyes, Titus's calculated smugness, even the elegant desperation on Kalique's face when she spoke of Regenex, and she wraps her arms around herself. "Seems like it causes as many problems as it solves."

"Well, now, that's definitely above my head." He stows the medkit and turns around, sees her hugging herself, and frowns. "Cold?"

She's freezing, actually. The entire ship is on the low side of her preferred temperature, but flying through an explosion and then abruptly drifting in outer space for several minutes has left her feeling chilled to the bone. "A bit."

"Well, now, that won't do." He hesitates for half a moment, then gives a rueful look and wriggles out of his uniform jacket, holds it up. When she doesn't protest, he slings it around her shoulders, tucks it closed in front like her mother used to do when she was little. "There you go. That should keep you till we can get you to the mess hall and get you something nice and hot to drink."

She looks pleadingly up at him. "Can't I go see Caine?"

"Aw, no, we'll just be in the way down there," he says. "He'll be up and about soon enough. Let's get something into your system so you don't fall over, and then I'll take you to your quarters and you can take a spin through the cleanser, get all that soot and shit off you. You'll feel better then."

"But-" she says, and fails to finish her protest, mostly because he wraps one broad, warm palm around her right elbow and takes a few steps towards the hall, tugging gently. She follows mostly on sheer instinct, trained into numb compliance by exhaustion and stress and two days of going wherever Caine points her.

Oh god, she misses Caine.

"And they have something for the bruises that you can put in the cleanser, get it before you turn black and blue," he soothes, moving inexorably forward. Her options are basically to start walking or get into a tug-of-war for her arm. She elects to follow, mostly because she doesn't really have the energy to protest. "It'll clear up before you're even back to your bed, so you might actually get some proper sleep."

That sounds amazing, she can't lie, but she still can't stop herself from spilling token protests even as she stumbles along at his side. "Then I should probably check on my family, make sure they're still okay."

"They're right as rain, still in the stasis pods. You and the pup got them out safe. It's you that needs the care just now."

"I'm fine," she says, but it's weak as hell and she knows it. He gives her a swift sideways glance, and then looks away, not saying anything. "Man, you're not even going to try and agree with me?" she jokes tiredly.

"People keep telling me I'm bad at lying," he says. He keeps his stride a little shorter than normal, slowing himself to her limping pace, and his voice is brisk but gentle. "Look. It'll be six hours minimum before we can get the drop shuttle ready to take your family back down to the surface. Unless you're planning on staying aboard when they do - which I don't think you are - you're going to have be up a few hours after that, pretending that nothing happened. You need food, a shower, and at least a few hours of sleep."

She shoots him an aggrieved look. She's not stupid; she knows when she's being managed. On the other hand, it's not like he's _wrong._ "Why did you have bring logic into things?"

"Not my strong suit, I know, but needs must, and all that."

She grimaces. "Well, I'll allow it. Just the once."

"Your majesty is too kind."

He hooks a right into the lift, tugging her after him, and keys in what she's pretty sure is the crew level. She notices the way his right hand hangs free by his side, his fingers drumming restlessly against his thigh near the spot where Caine straps his holster. Every time she's seen him with a gun it's been a rifle or shotgun or something, but he's Legion just the same as Caine is, so he's probably used to having a pistol there.

Little things, she thinks. She's always noticed the little things about people, the weird quirks that don't really mean anything but always seem super-interesting to her. Like the way he and Caine both walk a little heavier on their heels, compensating for a weight that isn't there anymore. The little nicks and scars that decorate Stinger's knuckles, electrical burns of some sort. The way Caine falls into parade rest when he's standing still, and puts his hands behind his back when he's feeling awkward. The hexagonal shape to Stinger's slate gray eyes. The fact that their stride is almost identical in cadence, despite the fact that Caine is a few inches taller. Stuff like that. Not for any particular reason, just because it's interesting, because people are interesting and she likes to know things about them.

Really, Jupiter just likes people. People don't often like Jupiter back so much.

She licks her lips and leans a bit more into his grip on her elbow, seeking warmth maybe, or just reassurance. Either way he doesn't say anything, just lets her nudge up against his side without comment. If she hadn't already pretty much forgiven him, she'd do it for that alone. She's taking advantage of him, probably, but it's just that she's gotten so used to having Caine's steadying warmth at her back that she feels a little unmoored. And Stinger is, whatever his other numerous differences, another ex-Legion splice who puts off warmth like a furnace and doesn't seem to mind looking after her a little. She'll take it.

And when she shoots him a nervous look from beneath her lashes, her own internal justifications perhaps not as strong as she'd like them to be, she can see a little smile twitching at the corner of his mouth, even as his own gaze is fixed firmly on the control panel. She huffs a breath and looks away on a smile, feeling a bit like she's gotten away with something.

They arrive at the crew level a moment later, and she straightens a bit, but he doesn't release his grip on her elbow. Instead, he leads her down the hallway until they get to a big open room that looks kind of like a cafeteria, a lot of long tables with benches and a weird, futuristic kitchen-type thing along one wall. It's completely empty, but that makes sense, considering how much the _Defiant_ must have been damaged in its last-minute portal. Everybody has some place they need to be right now. Except her. She's just… here.

Stinger nudges her down onto one of the benches. "Wait here a tick, and I'll get us something," he says, and gives her shoulder a final affectionate pat before he strides off. Feeling a bit like a dog told to stay, she swings her other leg over the bench and hunches down into his too-big coat, pulling the collar up around her face. It's almost impossible to resist the urge to bury her nose in the fabric - Caine has clearly been rubbing off on her, she didn't used to think about scent much aside to make sure she didn't smell like bleach - so she doesn't even try. Instead she just closes her eyes and inhales, gets the not-quite-leather smell of the Aegis uniforms, gun oil, sweat, and the same oddly spicy scent she keeps picking up off Caine. Something unique to splices, perhaps - though there's a sweetness there where Caine smells faintly of musk. _Honey bees,_ she thinks, and has to stifle a bout of semi-hysterical laughter so that Stinger doesn't think she's losing her shit.

_I mean, I am,_ she thinks, _but I should at least pretend not to be, right?_

Stinger comes back a minute later with two mugs, both lightly steaming, and sets one down in front of her. She wraps her hands around it, nudging the coat sleeves up her wrists to do so, and inhales the steam as he takes a seat across from her. The liquid in the cup is very dark and thick, and it smells rich and sort of generically sweet.

"What is this stuff? Is it like kava?"

"Kava?" he says, a little startled, and peers over at her as soon as he settles on the opposite bench. "Where did you try that?"

"Caine got me some in the Commonwealth, when we were standing in line," she says.

Stinger snorts. "Bet that got your heart rate up."

"Just a little." She smiles shyly. "It was… maybe a bit much for me. And I'm a dyed-in-the-wool coffee addict."

"No surprise there, kava is meant for splices," Stinger says, amused. "Our biology means that we generally burn through stimulants quickly, but kava is designed to frontload the delivery so that it overwhelms our metabolism and has a more prolonged effect. Its effect on a baseline is more like one of your energy shot things. Times several."

"Oh," she says, and laughs a little. "Well, that explains a lot. Helped me stay awake for a couple miserable hours in the Hall of Records, though, so I can't complain too much."

"Only a couple hours?"

"I may have fallen asleep on Caine's shoulder for a little bit in the middle there."

Saying his name reminds her that he's ill, that he's injured, because of her. She clenches her hands tighter around the mug and looks down.

"Something you and I have in common, then," he teases gently, and she looks back up, tries on a smile again.

"Aw, you used to nap on him, too?"

"Passed out, more like." He shrugs. "Hitting the bars after a mission is a time-honored Legion tradition."

"Sounds like you used to hit them pretty hard."

"Believe me, they hit back." He nods down to her mug. "You going to drink that, or just feel it up a bit?"

"Saucy," she says, but she brings the mug to her lips and takes a cautious sip. "It takes like cherries!" she says in surprise. "And not like, imitation candy-type cherries either."

"Of course not, we're not monsters." He takes a sip of his own and sighs in satisfaction. "Haven't had this stuff in ages. Mind you, I used to put liquor in mine."

She snorts and takes another slow, appreciative sip. She can feel the warmth from it roll down to her belly and spread. "Is it more like coffee, or…?"

"No caffeine or other stimulants," he promises. "It's actually a soother, closer to some of your herbal tea than anything. It's a synthetic replica of this tree-bark concoction… Anyway. I wouldn't hand you a cup full of uppers. You're supposed to get some sleep after this, remember?"

"Right." Exhaustion tugs down at her like an anvil, but she can't summon the desire for sleep, either. What she really wants to do is go down to the medbay to check on Caine, but she's sure that Stinger will nix that idea if she tries to suggest it again. On the other hand... "Are you sure I can't-"

"Look, lass, I'll not stop you if you're determined, but you should leave the docs to take care of Caine and look after yourself for a bit," he interrupts, then looks mortified to have done so. "I mean, your majesty-"

"Oh no, we're not starting that again," she says, and smiles at him tiredly as he subsides. "Besides, you have a point. I'm just being…"

"Concerned?" he suggests tentatively.

_Needy,_ she corrects mentally, but aloud she says only, "Sure, I guess. I don't like the thought of him getting hurt because of me."

"You'll have to forgive me if I point out that he likely disagrees," Stinger says. He sighs and scrubs a hand over his face. The calluses on his palm scratch audibly over the stubble. "Look. Caine's a soldier, and a damn good one, but he's always been more of one for personal loyalty than to the ideal, if you get my meaning. He's always been looking for someone to swear himself to."

"Because he's packless?"

"Because he's a noble, hard-headed idiot, mostly. And then here you come along: you're pretty, you're smart, and you clearly need him. Are you really surprised that he threw himself into danger to protect you?"

"No, but that doesn't make it right!" she says. It's probably a little too loud, judging by Stinger's startled flinch, but while she modulates her voice she can't quite bite down on the rest of the words piling up at the back of her tongue. "I don't care what Titus or Balem or, or anyone else says, my life isn't inherently more valuable than anyone else's. I mean, I'm incredibly grateful to be alive, don't think I'm not, but if he'd died making that happen I would not have been okay with that."

"Well, yeah. That'd be why he did it," Stinger says.

"What's _that_ supposed to mean?"

Stinger looks uncomfortable. "I don't know as much about it as most, not being a lycantant myself," he says reluctantly, but when she arches a prompting eyebrow at him, he continues. "Look, why do you think he bonded to you in the first place? An alpha protects, sure, but first and foremost an alpha is _worth protecting._ I know he was a bit of a prick about the whole thing, but you've got to cut him a bit of slack since it was even odds whether the bonding would override the royal pheromones, and the poor pup's never done too well with those, so…"

He trails off at the look on her face. "Shit," he mumbles. "What'd I say?"

"There are a few terms there that are new to me," she says sweetly. "Would you like to guess which ones?"

"Shit," he says again. "Caine didn't…?" He shakes his head before she has a chance to response. "What the hell am I even asking, of course he didn't." He sighs and slumps forward, rests his elbows on the tabletop and locks his hands around the back of his neck. "I'm guessing you'd like an explanation."

"Yes please."

He sighs, nods to her mug. "Finish that while I talk, and when we're done you go back to your quarters," he bargains.

She bites her lip against an incredibly poorly-timed smile at his wheedling tone. It's sweet that he's worrying over her, anyway, and at least he's not being all formal. "Deal."

###### 

Forty minutes later, Jupiter is standing in a tiny cleanser cubicle filled with a great deal of something like-but-not-quite-like steam and trying to convince herself that everything is going to be okay.

It's a bit of an uphill battle. She is not, by nature, an optimist. Or maybe that's just nurture, she's not sure. Either way, twenty-three years of living with her mother would be enough to cure anyone of optimism. (Except her Aunt Nino, obviously, because that woman is a ball of delusions and happy thoughts.) Jupiter has cynicism built into her very bones, and while she's been doing her best to keep that shit turned off the last few days (because if you're going to outer space, at least set aside old habits, right?), that has not been working out very well for her, either.

(She thinks of Titus's hand on her wrist, forcing her hand down into the branding machine, and wants to punch something.)

Stinger had explained, very nicely even, and then he'd answered a few questions, and then he'd escorted her back to her quarters. He hadn't said anything about how she was more quiet than before, but his hand was sure and steady on her elbow, and he left her at her door with a courtly bow and a flourish that should have left her feeling very, very uncomfortable, but instead made her laugh softly. She'd tried to give his coat back but he told her to keep it, that there wasn't much use for it on a farm in August. Reading between the lines, she’s pretty sure that it would be weird for him to wear it after she'd had it long enough to smell like her. Looking back, she’s also pretty sure that that’s the reason Caine hadn't been willing to borrow a shirt from Stinger. Maybe not so much macho bullshit, after all. She's learning.

Not fast enough, though. Obviously.

How did she manage to miss that there was this whole, huge, other thing going on with Caine? Here she was, flailing around flirting with him and making him promises she was clearly not equipped to fulfill, and he was dealing with an entirely separate set of worries, and she had _no idea._ Admittedly, it's not like he told her, okay, sure - but she knew Caine was laconic at the best of times, and while he'd shown a tremendous willingness to explain things to her when she asked, it was always really clear that he didn't like talking about himself. Of _course_ Caine wasn't going to tell her what he was going through. She should have noticed what was going on. Should have noticed _something,_ at least _._ God knows she was paying attention.

It's just… Okay. So she was flirting. She was not subtle about it. She was about ninety percent certain that he was flirting back, at least some of the time. She's still mostly sure of that much, if only because he did a) kiss her back when she kissed him, and b) kiss her himself, when she pulled back. That's usually a pretty clear signal. Usually.

But what she was thinking of as a pretty straightforward, if admittedly large, difference-of-social-standing issue was, in fact, complicated by a whole bunch of not-sexy hormones on his side, and she had no idea. The issue with the royal pheromones is bad enough (which, holy shit, she thought his thing with Entitled was just him with a chip on his shoulder about asshole rich people, who doesn't have one of those?) but the pack bonding thing is something else altogether. According to Stinger, she's now Caine's alpha, which means that he is bonded to her on a biological level. That leaves her with some… not-good feelings about the way she was hitting on him, in retrospect. If he's bonded to her, does he even have the ability to tell her no? Is he even _attracted_ to her, or was it just the bonding thing that made him want to do what she clearly wanted?

Okay, so maybe that last question is a bit over the top, but still. She hangs onto the image in her mind of Caine's face when she bared her throat in that alley in the Commonwealth, the way the rueful fondness in his face tipped over into a hot flash of _want_ as his face went so, so still. Tries to remember the feel of his lips on hers, the way he closed his eyes to kiss her. Those are true things, too.

Still. How can she _know?_

She growls and scrubs her hands through her damp hair, though it's not like there's any shampoo or anything to rinse out, trying to knock loose some of the thoughts circling endlessly in her head. She can _ask him,_ that's how she can know. Which she will. When he wakes up. Because he's going to wake up, and he's going to be fine. Stinger told her so, and even Caine called Stinger a terrible liar, so she knows it has to be true.

And if he doesn't feel that way… Well, she'll be disappointed, _obviously,_ but she'll deal. She likes Caine - really, _really_ likes him, actually - and if this pack things means that she's not getting a boyfriend but she is getting a friend, well, she'll be okay with that, too. Even if she never gets to find out what he looks like when her knees are draped over those freckled shoulders, she'll still want to show him _Brazil_ and cook him dinner and maybe take him out to play darts at her favorite bar. Stinger made it sound like- like he'd want to stick around, maybe. Like she might be something that would make him want to stay.

She wants so badly to be that to someone that it's frankly a little terrifying. And for that someone to be _Caine,_ who's done nothing but save her life over and over and put his hand on her back when they walk like maybe he knows how badly she wants to run away, who tells jokes and looks startled when she laughs, who's awkward and laconic and smiles like he's forgotten how, who makes her want to curl herself around him until he loses that strained expression he gets sometimes and just relaxes…

For that someone to be Caine, well, it would mean a lot. Maybe a lot more than she's entirely willing to think about. _(God, Jupiter, you've only known him for, what, like three days?)_ But it doesn't matter. Jupiter's done what she always does: gotten invested in somebody, way too deep and way too fast, and there's nothing left to do but brazen it out.

Eventually she realizes that she's been standing in the cleanser for way longer than entirely necessary, especially considering that she's pretty sure the actual cleanser… stuff… worked in about the first thirty seconds, and the instructions on the bruise-treatment additive Stinger talked about said to wait two minutes. She's been in here for like, twenty. At least. After a certain point it goes past enjoying the heat and into wallowing, so she finally sighs, powers the unit down, and climbs out of the cubicle. She lets the (still so very weird) instant dryer-beam do its thing, then picks up the now-clean borrowed uniform and puts it back on. It's starting to feel almost more natural than her regular clothes, which says something about either the impressiveness of space tailoring or the cheapness of her usual stuff.

After a moment's hesitation she wraps herself back up in Stinger's jacket. She's not cold anymore, not after cooking herself for close to half an hour in the not-steam, but it just… makes her feel better. She hung it carefully away from the rest of her clothes, and unlike the rest it doesn't have the pleasantly neutral smell of the cleanser. It still smells the man who wore it, and she hunches her shoulders into the weight of it, slides the too-long sleeves up her wrists.

She scrubs her hands through her now-dry hair, considers and discards the idea of pulling it back on the grounds that she doesn't want to give her lurking headache any more ammunition, and scuffs her bare foot against the warm metal grating of the floor. Stinger's right; she should go to bed. Now that most of the aches and pains are fading away, the exhaustion underneath is rearing its head much more urgently, probably helped along by the long hot not-shower and Stinger's cherry soother stuff. She'll be much better equipped to face the rest of the inevitable shitshow of getting her family replaced with none the wiser if she has a few hours of sleep under her belt. It would be the smart thing to do.

On the other hand, _Caine._

Decision made, she heads out of the bathroom to find her boots - only to stop dead at the sight of the man himself, standing in open hatch of the door to the hallway, his hand raised as if to knock on the frame.

They stare at each other in startled silence for a long moment, before Jupiter breaks the moment with a nervous chuckle. "I was, um, just coming to look for you," she explains, and Caine relaxes a little, lets his hand drop to his side.

"Well, your majesty has been very successful in her search," he says, in that dry way he has that always makes her smile. He inclines his head towards her. "May I?"

It takes her an embarrassing half-second before she realizes that he's asking if he can come into the room. "Oh, of course!" she sputters, because she is _so awkward,_ and steps backwards to allow him entry. He brushes past her a little closer than is probably strictly necessary, and she pivots to follow him like there's a hook under her breastbone.

He hesitates for just a moment in the middle of the room, and while his expression doesn't really change, there's still something - in the line of his shoulders, maybe, or the flex of his jaw - that makes her realize that despite his apparent confidence, he's feeling just as awkward and out-of-place as she. It's oddly comforting, and it gives her enough courage to put her hand to his elbow and draw him over to the window.

He follows willingly, bless the man, and when she tentatively reaches out to put her free hand on his hip - watching his face the whole time, so she can pull back if he flinches - he lets out a slow breath that sounds nothing but relieved and sweeps his palm equally slowly up her back. She leans into it, couldn't help it even if she wanted to, and Caine's face softens, his head inclining down towards her. He doesn't look like someone who doesn't want to be here, someone who's trapped against their will by a quirk of biology. He doesn't look reluctant at all.

He looks like he wants to kiss her.

She bites her lip, then decides, _fuck it, dignity's for chumps,_ and just goes for it. "Can I have a hug?"

There's a mortifying pause that feels like it lasts forever but in reality probably doesn't take more than half a second, and then Caine's light touch on her back turns insistent, herding her inwards. She goes gladly, burrowing into his warmth and pressing her cheek against the notches of his collarbone, and he wraps his long arms around her shoulders and hugs her close. There's another breath of a pause, and then he slowly dips down his head, presses his nose into her hair. He takes a deep breath and then exhales on a sigh, and the tension leeches out of his frame.

She hides her smile against his uniform shirt and squeezes his waist - gently, in deference to whatever bumps and bruises he almost certainly has. "I'm really glad you're okay."

“I could most certainly say the same for your majesty,” he says into her hair.

“Hey, I’m not the one who got _poisoned,_ buddy. After _crashing through a hurricane._ In the who-got-more-messed-up sweepstakes, you take the grand prize.”

Caine makes a little noise of disagreement in the back of his throat, and she rubs her cheek into the way it vibrates gently through his chest. “When I lost track of you-”

“Hey,” she says, and cups a hand around the back of his neck, soothing. He leans back into her grip, letting out a sigh she wouldn’t have been able to hear if they weren’t pressed so close together. “I took care of myself. And when I couldn’t anymore, you were still there. That’s what counts.”

“Mm,” he says. It’s not quite an agreement, but it’s not outright disagreement, either. “Stinger told me you’d been hurt.”

“Well, _that_ can’t be much of a surprise,” she tries to joke, but Caine’s arm just tightens fractionally around her waist. “Yeah, okay. It wasn’t anything too serious, though. Bumps and bruises, mostly what you’d expect.”

“And your blood I smelled on him?” Caine inquires, his voice dry. “That came from a bruise, too?”

Well, now she _knows_ he’s feeling better, if he’s going to start teasing her. “For the record, that super-nose thing you two have going, that’s cheating,” she informs him. “I got a cut on my arm. Stinger sealed it up, though. And he gave me some stuff for the bruises. I’m fine now.” Or as close as she’s going to get anytime soon, anyway. She tugs at the hem of his uniform shirt. “What about you? They made that venom stuff sound like kind of a big deal.” _Plus there was that whole thing where you blacked out in the middle of space and scared the shit out of me._ “You, uh. You sure you’re good?”

“Sound as a fusion engine,” he says, startling a laugh out of her.

“I’m just going to assume that’s pretty sound,” she says.

She can hear the smile in his voice when he assures her, “It’s very sound.” His broad palm smooths down the line of her spine, leaving a wash of heat in its wake. “Mmm. The bruise treatment wasn’t the only thing Stinger gave you.”

Jupiter’s abruptly aware of the heavy jacket wrapped around her shoulders, still noticeably smelling like Stinger’s spicy-sweet scent even to her nose. “Yeah, um. Apparently I looked cold.”

“Shock will do that,” he agrees, nosing at her temple. “‘s why I gave you mine on Titus’s ship. Although,” he adds, his voice turning sly, “you didn’t keep that one.”

Jupiter snorts into the crook of his neck, thinking of the stiffly stoic look on Caine’s face, the way the misery had fairly crackled between them when she’d handed back his borrowed uniform coat. It all seems so far away now, with the heat and weight of him wrapped around her, holding her safe. “Yeah, I’m gonna call _extenuating circumstances_ on that one, bud.” She straightens up, wanting to make eye contact, and Caine’s grip slackens just enough for her to lean back and tilt up her chin to meet his gaze. “I can take it off if it bothers you.”

“No, why would it?” he says, honestly baffled, as if she’s taken brain damage and wouldn’t remember how incredibly weird he got at the very _suggestion_ of wearing something of Stinger’s before. She gives him a speaking look, and he huffs one of those little half-chuckles that he does, like he’s not sure he’s allowed to laugh out loud. “ _Extenuating circumstances,_ ” he quotes back at her, smiling. “We’re good now, Sting and I.”

This is just going to be one of those weird lycantant things she’s going to have to learn, she decides. Maybe there’s a manual somewhere. She’ll have to ask Stinger if he has anymore educational holo-text things lying around.

Hopefully one that doesn’t short out on him.

“I’m glad,” she says, a smile creeping up on her face at the memory. “He was really helpful earlier.” She laughs a little, thinking of his voice in her ear, the way she’d spun herself halfway to a panic attack before he stepped in. “God, what an understatement. I’d probably be a gibbering mess without him, honestly.”

“Good,” Caine says, equally soft. The hand on her hip starts fiddling with the hem of her jacket, like he just can’t hold still. “I mean- not that you were upset. Obviously. Just, it’s good he looked after you. He’s good at that.”

“Yeah, he is.” The thing they’re both carefully not talking about hangs heavy in the air between them, and she clears her throat, feeling the awkwardness wash back over her like a wave. _Suck it up, Jupe. This is important._ “He, um. He and I talked for a bit, too. Um. About you.”

Pressed as close as they are, it’d be impossible to miss the way he locks up at her words, but he doesn’t move away, either, and he doesn’t try to break her careful eye contact. “Yeah. He told me.” He stands a little straighter, looking about as uncomfortable as she’s seen him since they left Titus’s ship. “I owe your majesty an apology.”

Now that, that doesn’t sound like a fun ‘your majesty.’ She squints up at him. “What? No! I was going to say I owed _you_ an apology.”

A little crease appears between his brows, but at least he’s not doing that stiff, distant, good-soldier look anymore. “What for?”

“For not noticing what was going on with you,” she says, though her throat goes tight at the admission. “I knew you had a thing about royals, obviously, but I definitely didn’t get… what _kind_ of thing. Or any of the stuff with, y’know. Me. The bonding stuff. I should have been paying better attention.”

“Your majesty, _no,_ ” he says, sounding appalled. She swallows hard as he adds haltingly, “I should’ve- I should’ve told you. It was unfair to keep you out of the loop. But I didn’t know what was happening at first, and when I did I just thought- I’d go, and it wouldn’t be an issue, and you wouldn’t have to worry about it, and then-”

She can’t help the way her hand clenches into a fist in the collar of his shirt at the thought of him leaving. It has the unwelcome side effect of making him fall immediately silent, probably at the pressure of the collar on his throat, and she’s about to let go with an apology when she notices the way his pupils flared wide and his breath caught at the back of his throat. She stares him, transfixed.

_Oh, boy. I am in so very far over my head._

She eases her grip on his collar and smooths it back into place with her palm, leaving her hand cupped around the back of his neck. “Look, how about we both accept each other’s apologies and move on, okay?” He looks a little stubborn about it, like he wants to argue the necessity, but when she raises an eyebrow he nods, reluctantly. “And… okay, look, I know neither of us are super-great at sharing and caring time, okay? But, like, this is one of those things where I think we need to use actual words, and I just need to know…”

She runs out of words a moment later, helpless to express the enormity of what she’s feeling: how much she worries about taking advantage of him, how badly she wants him to stay. She’s never actually owned anything that wasn’t secondhand or passed down from some relative, and now she owns an entire _planet_ and that’s still less than nothing compared to what it would mean if Caine were hers, too.

But he has to _choose_ that. She’s been at the mercy of richer and more powerful people her entire life, and some of them have been cruel and some of them have been kind, but she doesn’t want that for Caine. He fought so hard and so long for his freedom, and he deserves to have that. And she deserves better than to be the chain around someone’s neck.

And maybe some of that is showing on her face, because Caine’s face is going softer now, hopeful in a way that she feels right down to her toes. “What?” he breathes, nudging impossibly closer to her, ducking his head so he can peer directly into her eyes. “Your majesty, what is it?”

_God, I can’t take this._ “Do you want to be here?” she blurts finally. His only reaction is a startled blink, and then it’s like the dam is broken, words flowing out of her faster than she can stop. “I know it’s… complicated, with bonding hormones and stuff, and I don’t understand it very well but I know it’s serious, and I don’t want you to be tied down by some weird chemicals if you’d rather go, and if there’s anything I can do to change it I will, I promise I’ll help, you just need to tell me-”

“Your majesty,” Caine says, cutting her off. Slowly, impossibly, he’s starting to smile. “I made my choice when I came after you on the planet.”

There’s a feeling climbing up through her chest, and she doesn’t know what it is just yet but it feels like it’s filling her up, stretching her out like a helium balloon. “...oh,” is all she manages.

His tiny smile gets a little wider. “I don’t know how well Sting explained it, but for lycantants… betas choose. Always. I’m not- you didn’t make me do anything I didn’t want to do. I’m.” He stutters to a stop, takes a deep breath. “I’m exactly where I want to be.”

“ _Oh,_ ” she breathes, and the feeling climbs up to the back of her throat and she realizes that it’s joy. “That’s, um. That’s really good. Great! That’s really great.”

He’s laughing at her. He’s nice enough not to do it out loud, but she knows that look in his eyes by now, and he’s definitely laughing at her on the inside. “Great,” he echoes, still smiling faintly. “Yeah. Me too.”

“Oh good,” she says, faintly. She rubs her thumb over the hollow behind his ear, absently, not thinking anything of it until he closes his eyes and a convulsive shiver runs down the length of his spine. “Um.”

Caine slowly blinks his eyes back open, and she couldn’t look away from him even if she wanted to. “Do we have to keep talking?” he says, a little plaintively. It punches a startled bark of laughter out of her.

“God, no, that sounds great,” she says. She knows her smile is too big, too bright, too _something,_ but Caine just smiles back at her, a little awkwardly. _God,_ she likes him so much. “We’re kind of terrible at it.”

“No, you’re amazing,” he says. He ducks his chin a little, shy all of a sudden. “You’re amazing, and I’m a wreck. It’s just…”

“Yeah?” she says, when he doesn’t look like he’s going to continue on his own.

“You’re _here,_ ” he finishes, and for a moment even his rough growl sounds incredibly young. “You’re here, and you’re touching me and you smell amazing, and I just- I can’t think straight.” He ducks his head and rubs his cheek against her, noses against the lobe of her ear and takes a deep breath, lets it out on a long sigh. “I don’t even want to.”

_Wow,_ is all Jupiter can think. _I am so not equipped to handle how attractive this is._

With his mouth still so close to her ear, she feels as much as hears his quick inhale of air, scenting her. “Your _majesty,_ ” he growls, and she feels that initial pulse of arousal flare into something low and sweet in her belly. Okay, yeah, that’s a fun new kink that’s here to stay, hearing her title in Caine’s rough, beautiful whisper.

_We should really get some rest and pick this back up later,_ she tells herself, but still she turns her head blindly toward his. He doesn’t step back, doesn’t move away, just makes an eager sound that she’s probably going to be hearing in her fantasies for years to come and ducks his face closer, his mouth hovering a bare inch away from hers. Waiting for her to close the gap.

 _Fuck it,_ she decides, and kisses him.

He holds very still for a moment, just letting her explore a little, but when she tentatively slips her tongue out from between her lips and dabs it against his, he makes _another_ incredible noise and catches her up against him, his big, warm hands clenching eagerly around her hips and tugging. Before this moment she would have thought that they were as tightly pressed together as two people could be, but _boy_ was she wrong on that one. She's had a fair bit of sex in her life, but she doesn't know that she's ever felt so wrapped up in somebody, from nothing more than a bit of what is, actually, still kind of tame making-out.

_This is going to be really good,_ she thinks hazily.

Under her hands she can feel his shoulders flex, and it seems like an unusual muscle movement before she realizes that he's trying to wrap her up in non-existent wings. _Oh fuck, I can't wait for that to be a thing that happens._ She runs one hand up his spine and wraps it around the back of his neck, squeezes firmly and earns herself another not-quite-moan. Under her fingertips she can feel the rough edges of the brand on the side of his neck, and she pulls back, gasping for air, ducking her face down to press a kiss against the hinge of his jaw while she recovers.

"Okay, wow," she says faintly, into the side of his neck, and he makes a pleased noise, flexes his hands on her hips and rests his cheek against her temple. "Well, that answers one question."

"What question?" Caine’s voice is a low, intimate rumble next to her ear. She shivers pleasantly.

"I was worried you weren't actually attracted to me, but that seems like… maybe not so much of an issue."

"Definitely not," Caine breathes. He straightens up a little, then brings one calloused palm to her jaw, nudges gently till she leans up out of her slouch enough to make eye contact. "You seriously thought that?"

“It was… a concern,” she says, delicately. _One that seems kinda fucking stupid now, doesn’t it, Jupe?_ "I was worried that maybe what I was mistaking for… attraction, was really… signs of the bonding process. I mean, I obviously misread signs from you a few times there, so I was thinking maybe I just misread them… a bit worse than I originally thought."

"Jupiter," he says, and she can't really hide how incredibly happy it makes her to hear him say her name, so she doesn't try. The corner of his mouth twitches a little. "I can count on one hand the number of times in my life I've been _this_ attracted to someone. And have fingers left over."

"Oh," she says, intelligently.

The twitch grows a little closer to a real smile. "Yeah. So you definitely-" he rubs his thumb over the cut of her hipbone, provoking a shiver. "- _definitely_ don't have to worry about that."

"I see the error of my ways," she says, and rubs her own thumb along his hairline, at the nape of his neck. He makes a pleased rumbling noise and arches his neck up into her grip. "Maybe it seems stupid to you, I don't know."

"Your majesty isn't stupid," Caine says insistently, and she smiles her acknowledgement but continues.

"I just- I've done enough stuff without thinking it through recently, right? And I wanted to make sure that I wasn't, you know, forcing anything on you. That you… might not want."

"How are you so-" he says, and cuts himself off with a growl. “Trust me. It’s not a worry.”

_How am I so *what?*_ But she knows she’s pressed him enough for the day - for the month, probably. They’ve got time. “Okay, check that one off the list then,” she says, deliberately breezy. His eyes warm at her attempt to lighten the tone, and she smiles back at him. “That is definitely something we are going to be exploring later, buster. At length. Put it on your schedule.”

“I am at your majesty’s disposal,” he says solemnly, but she can see the laughter in his eyes.

Yeah, okay. So she hasn’t known him very long, and maybe doesn’t know him very _well_ , yet, either. But she thinks she might understand the important stuff just fine.

The rush of happiness leaves her feeling a little reckless. “Well, maybe for tonight you could dispose yourself to keep me company?” she says, deliberately pitching her voice a little low. “I mean, this ship _is_ pretty cold. You could help keep me warm.”

“I can’t have your majesty catching chill,” he says, lips twitching. He smooths a hand down her arm. “The legion field guide recommends sharing body heat during extreme temperature drop. Do you think that might help here?”

“Oh, I think that sounds like just what the doctor ordered.” She draws him back to the window nook, and they settle in, Caine putting her very firmly in between him and the window, reserving the spot nearest to the door for himself. He doesn’t quite fit, one long leg sprawled off the side and braced against the floor, but he seems comfortable enough on his back, and he makes a little purring noise of satisfaction when he pulls her onto his chest that sounds more like a cat than a wolf. She peers down the length of him at his feet, which are still encased in his gravity-boot things. “Aren’t you going to take those off?”

“Not easily,” he rumbles. “Don’t worry. I’m used to it.”

She doesn’t know what the _Deadlands_ are, but if he was living there for years before this, then this is probably the height of luxury for him. “Sure thing,” she says, and resolves privately to spoil the hell out of him later. She smothers her smile against the side of his chest. “You comfy?”

“Yes.” He fiddles with the end of her sleeve. “I thought about this,” he admits, after a moment, in the low tones of someone confessing to a sin. “On Orus, when you fell asleep.”

She nuzzles into his shoulder. “Yeah?” she says quietly.

“Yeah. I thought about putting my arm around you, like this.” He squeezes her shoulders. “I thought you’d…” He trails off, and for a moment she thinks he won’t finish, but then: “Fit. I thought you’d fit.”

“Yeah,” she breathes out, on a sigh. Finally horizontal, days of exhaustion are rushing up on her like a freight train, and with Caine’s warm weight against her side she couldn’t keep her eyes open if her life depended on it. “And do I?”

Distantly, she feels him duck his head, press a kiss to the top of her hair. “Perfectly, your majesty,” he whispers, and she smiles into his shoulder as she slides down, down, down into sleep.

###### 

Jupiter wakes to the sound of a faint buzzing in her ear. She swats at it irritably - god, they’ve really got to fix that screen in the bathroom window - but freezes when he hand encounters warm muscle instead of the thin air she was expecting.

“Alarm,” Caine murmurs from above her. She can hear his voice rumbling through his chest like a bass drum, vibrating down the line of her jaw and throat where her head is pillowed into the hollow of his shoulder. “On your commcall. Set it before we slept.”

“How are you so incredibly sensible all the time,” she says, still a little muzzy from sleep, and smiles reflexively at the way his chuckle shakes through his body.

“Don’t hear that too often.”

Yeah, he hasn’t exactly been the most level-headed guy, the last few days. Lots of throwing himself into danger for no good reason. Some of that was his sense of duty, or the bonding hormones or whatever, but she’d bet a shiny nickel that if she asked Stinger he’d tell her that Caine’s always been like this.

“I do not doubt that for a minute.” She straightens up, yawning, and runs her hand over her hair. God, she probably looks like a nightmare - morning is not her best time - but when she glanced back to Caine, he’s smiling up at her like she’s the best thing he’s ever seen. “Um. Hi.”

“Hello,” he says back, softly. “Sleep alright?”

She strokes her fingers across his palm, a little shy. “Yeah,” she says, and hooks her fingers through his. “Um. What time is it?”

“I set it for shift change ship-time,” he says, and squints slightly, clearly doing a bit of math in his head. “About… three thirty your time?”

“In the _afternoon?_ ” God, how is she going to get her family back into their homes without being seen? Maybe just go for it and hope for the best? The Keepers have that nifty mind-wipe technology, maybe they can use that-

“In the night.”

Okay, that’s a little more workable. “We say ‘in the morning,’” Jupiter corrects absently, then winces. “Uh. Sorry. I’m too used to correcting my family’s English, I guess. I didn’t mean to insult you.”

“No, I could use the help. Translators only do so much.” There’s a little twitch of a smile at the corner of his mouth, which is rapidly becoming her new favorite thing. “What’s your plan?”

“Oh my god, it is so sweet that you think I’m capable of making plans right now.” She scrubs her palms over her face and tries not to think about the pile of tasks that are waiting for her outside of this door. “I need coffee. Like, so much coffee. Or kava.”

“This is an Aegis ship.”

“So?”

“So, I saw enough of your television to know that cops run on stimulants on your planet, too.”

“See, this is why I keep you around, because you’re so helpful.” She drops her hands into her lap and peeks at him, grinning. “Okay, so coffee first. Then Captain Tsing, if she’s got time for me.”

“I think she’ll manage to make time,” Caine says, sounding amused. She makes a face at him.

“Apparently my planet didn’t invent _sarcasm,_ either. We’re going to need to coordinate getting my family back down to their homes, make sure we get them properly memory-wiped because they will freak out _so_ hard, otherwise, and I need to make sure that they’ve got a way to contact me, make sure she’s not going to press charges against Stinger, and- What?” she says, when his face goes still. “What’d I say?”

“Stinger wouldn’t expect you to do that,” Caine says softly, and she’d get offended at the implication that she _wouldn’t_ except he’s got this incredible soft look on his face, like she’s something miraculous. It makes her heart flutter more than anyone should have to endure once they’re out of _high school,_ and she looks away, clearing her throat.

“Yeah, well, Stinger’s an idiot,” she says solidly.

Caine snorts. “You’ll get no argument from me.” He runs a hand down her thigh - not like he’s groping her, or trying to start something sexual, more like he just wants to keep a hand on her. “It’s a good thing, you’re doing for him. I don’t know if it means anything coming from me, but-”

“Of course it does!” she says. “Caine, c’mon. You know better than that.”

The way he ducks his head a little tells her that maybe he _didn’t_ know better than that, but that’s okay. She’s not going to break through a lifetime of conditioning in a day, and she can be patient. “He’d probably tell you it’s more than he deserves,” Caine says, after a moment. “But it’s not. What he did, for Kiza- I would have done the same thing. Not- to you,” he stutters, “I mean, I wouldn’t have-”

“You would have sacrificed someone to save your family,” she finishes, and he nods gratefully. “Yeah. I know. Me too. Hell, I almost sacrificed a _planet,_ I think that beats out a lousy couple of people.”

“But you didn’t.”

“It’s my home,” she says. She thinks of the madness in Balem’s eyes, the sheer uncompromising avarice on his face. “And he never would have let us live. Not really. Alive I would always be a challenge. In the end it wasn’t really a choice, not like it was for Stinger.” She pictures her mother, coughing herself away to nothing, and shivers. “I would have done worse for my family.”

“Yes,” he says. “Me too,” and she knows exactly who he means.

She cups her hand over his, wanting to lighten the mood a little. “Hey,” she says. “Speaking of Stinger. He said he figured it out, about the bonding thing, when you started to smell like me. Is that really a thing or was he just bullshitting me?”

“Real,” Caine says, with a tiny smile. The side of his thumb rubs restively at the outside seam of her jeans. “Not to say Stinger won’t bullshit, good instincts there, but that one’s true. It’s a demonstration of biological compatibility.”

She eyes him sideways. “That’s not a weird way of saying it’s a breeding thing, is it? Because if it is, I’ve got to warn you, I’m not too interested in-”

“Fuck, no,” Caine says, looking about as appalled as she feels. She snorts at the look on his face and it cracks back into a smile. “Lycantant bonding isn’t sexual. I mean, it can be, but that’s not really what it’s for.”

“So, what is it for?”

“Um,” he says, and she recognizes the expression on his face as precisely the same one her mother gets when trying to mentally translate something indelibly Russian into words that will make sense to an outsider. “Stability, kind of? And trust. It’s not that different from soldiers anywhere, really. Betas choose an alpha to follow and the alpha bonds them into a pack so they all look after each other. It’s a give and take kind of thing.”

If so, she’s been doing a shitty job as an alpha lately, taking so much more than she’s been giving. She doesn’t say it out loud, because she knows what Caine would say in reply - that she’s wrong, that she’s given back plenty, that the balance goes the other way. But she knows the truth. She’ll just have to make sure she lives up to it, in the future.

“And that means that you start to smell like me, as, what, some kind of indicator to other betas?” He nods. “Does it go the other way?” He shakes his head. “Because I’m human?”

“Because it doesn’t work that way,” Caine says. “Packs can sometimes get as big as ten betas, it’d just be a jumble.”

“So how to other lycantants tell who’s the alpha?”

“Usually, by the betas following them around,” he says dryly. “They’re hard to miss.”

She gives him an admiring look. “I bet.”

“Real lycans are a lot bigger than me,” he says, looking amused.

She gives him another look, even more evaluative. If he’s not damn near a foot taller than her she’ll eat her boots. “Seriously?”

“I know Stinger told you I was a runt.”

“I thought he was joking.”

“Not about that,” he says. “I was too small, too pale. Too-” He gives her an apologetic look.

“Human?”

He shrugs. “Maybe. It’s why I didn’t bond.”

“I’m sorry,” she says, and means it. She can’t imagine anyone rejecting him. The thought of it makes her throat go tight. “They didn’t know what they were missing.”

“I’m not,” Caine says, with breathtaking sincerity. “Sorry, I mean. It worked out. I’m right where I belong.”

Well, there’s nothing she can do with that but kiss him, obviously. So she does, swinging a leg over his to settle into his lap and bracing her hands on his shoulders to press her lips to the startled ‘o’ of his mouth. He melts into it immediately, his hands coming up to knead at her hips, and the part of her mind that’s still fully functioning is pleased to note that he isn’t trying to treat her like spun glass, like she’s always sort of thought it would be like to be a princess. No, he grabs her and holds her, solid and sure, and she grins into the kiss and thinks, _Then again, I’m not a princess._

_I’m a goddamn Queen._

She finishes the kiss with a little nip that pulls a pleased growl out of his throat, and then straightens up, smiling at the way he automatically leans up to follow her before catching himself and settling back down. “I wish we could just do this forever.”

“I’m sure the Aegis would be willing to accommodate your majesty’s request,” Caine says slyly. She narrows her eyes at him.

“Hey now. You’re supposed to be encouraging me to be responsible, not to blow off important stuff.”

“Of course,” he says, very serious, the corners of his eyes crinkled into a smile. “What was I thinking.”

“Good things,” she says. “But good things for later. I’ve got to get my family down to Earth and settled, and you…” She fiddles with the collar of his shirt. “You need to go get your pardon taken care of.”

“I don’t have to,” Caine says immediately. “It can wait.”

“It kind of can’t.” She puts a finger to his lips when he looks like he’d argue further. “I’ll be here when you get back. I promise. But your pardon... Those are your _wings_ , Caine. That’s important. It’s like, the most important thing.”

He tilts his head back to give her a look of mute protest, and she can read the thought in his eyes as clear as day: _You’re the most important thing._

_Begin as you mean to go on,_ her mother always says, and why is it that the older she gets, the more she learns to see the wisdom in her mother’s sermons? Stinger tried to downplay the seriousness of Caine’s decision, when he explained it to her, but he still admitted that Caine’s choice was permanent. He will always be bound to her, and maybe that’s a thing that he wanted, and she will always respect that choice because it was his to make. But it’s her responsibility to make sure that he never has cause to regret it, either. And she knows that he’d regret waiting even one moment longer than necessary to get back his wings.

“Look at it this way,” she says, cupping a hand around his jaw. “This way, for our first date, you can take me flying.”

“First date?” Caine says, his brows raised. She’s about to explain, when he continues, a little slyly, “The way it seemed in the culture briefing, we must be almost on our third by now.”

From the amusement in his eyes, he knows damn well the cultural expectations around third dates, so she just snorts and says, “Compromise on second date. We’ll see how it goes from there.”

“Deal.” He nuzzles a little against her palm. “You know, it’s hard to take you flying without boots.”

“What, you mean you can’t just carry me on your back again?”

He makes a lazy noise of dissent. “Wings.”

Yeah, those would get in the way. God, he’s going to have _wings._ She can’t wait. “Well, then I guess you’ll just have to add it to your shopping list while you’re gone, won’t you?”

“Getting jackboots for anyone not a member of the Legion is a criminal offense,” Caine points out, though not like he minds. “Punishable by up to ten years of hard labor in an asteroid mine.”

She flicks her fingers against the lobe of his ear. “That going to be a problem for you?”

He grins, actually, outright _grins._ She’s struck a little dumb at the sight of it. “Not at all, your majesty. I like a challenge.”

She thinks of all they’ve been through the last couple days. Even when he was intending to leave, he still pulled off the impossible to keep her safe. _Trust,_ he said, and she can feel it in the core of her, the kind of bone-deep certainty that you get to experience only a few times in your life. That she can trust him, not just with her safety, but with every secret, every messy part of her. That given time, he’ll give the same back to her. Even though she’s not worth it, that she doesn’t deserve that kind of faith. She’s a bad bet by any measure, but he’ll do it because he trusts her enough to make the leap.

“I just bet you do, buddy.” She leans down and presses a kiss to his forehead. “I just bet you do.”

###### 

“Your majesty,” Captain Tsing says, sounding about as disapproving as a very formal woman can bring herself to appear to someone she considers a superior. “Are you absolutely certain about this?”

Jupiter has to fight not to squirm at the look on her face. She and authority figures have not, traditionally, gotten along very well, for any number of perfectly good reasons. Reminding herself that she’s a royal and that Captain Tsing is technically under her command doesn’t really help the urge to kick her legs under the chair and say something sarcastic.

But she’s not a teenager waiting for her mother to come pick her up from the police station because she was caught out during curfew, so she just takes a deep breath, straightens her back, and says, “Yes. I am absolutely certain.”

“I can, reluctantly, agree to the wisdom of dropping the charges against Warden Apini,” Tsing says. Jupiter wants to wince on Stinger’s behalf at the icy way Tsing says his name. “Considering the circumstances, it is your prerogative to make that request. Although it is unnecessary, given the pardon that Lord Titus authorized,” Tsing adds, almost like she can’t help herself. “All crimes prior to the moment of signature are considered null and void, which includes his kidnapping and forced imprisonment of yourself and Lieutenant Wise.”

“Yes, but if the charges are pressed then he will have to go through arbitration before the Magistrate applies the pardon, which will be added to his formal record in the Magisterial Hall,” Jupiter replies calmly. She was fairly certain that Tsing would make this argument, and prepped accordingly. “Which would negatively impact his chances of reinstatement to the Legion, with rank.”

Tsing eyes her sideways. “You are very familiar with Magisterial law,” she says.

“I had a lot of time to read.”

“Apparently.” Tsing sighs. “Your majesty, may I be informal?”

Jupiter hides a smile. “I would appreciate it if you were.”

“Stinger Apini is not getting back into the Legion,” Tsing says bluntly. “You can keep it off his record if you want, but people will talk. The best he can hope for is an honorable discharge.”

This isn’t news either. “Which means that he’s eligible to have his wings replaced,” Jupiter says. “I think, if you’d ask him, he’d tell you it’s worth it.”

“I think if I asked him he’d tell you to press the damn charges,” Tsing says, and sighs. “Noble idiot. I do hope you at least understand that this could reflect poorly on you, down the line. Accusations of favoritism to splices can be especially… delicate, among royals. And considering your other request…”

_Here we go._ “I am absolutely certain about that, as well.”

“It’s inadvisable.”

“You’ve made that very clear, believe me.”

Tsing winces. “I should not presume to advise your majesty,” she says, with the tone of someone saying something she doesn’t believe. “But considering your majesty’s relative inexperience with Magisterial politics, I would be remiss if I did not attempt to impress upon you the seriousness of what you are doing.”

“And I do understand,” Jupiter says, gently. “About as well as I can, anyway. But if you only do the right thing when there won’t be any consequences, you’re not very good at doing the right thing, are you?”

Captain Tsing looks at her for a long time, until Jupiter wants to squirm again. “I can understand why he chose you,” she says, finally. “Your majesty would have fit in very well in the Legion.”

“Um,” Jupiter says. “Thank you? I think?”

A tiny hint of a smile twitches at the corner of Tsing’s mouth. “It was a compliment.” She pulls out a datapad and holds it out. “Here. I had Commander Percadium prepare this when you relayed your wishes. All you have to do is affix your seal and it’s done.”

Jupiter takes it, a little warily. The last time she was in this position, it didn’t go very well for her. But there, on the screen, translated into English for her benefit, are the terms she requested. All charges in the matter of the kidnapping and forced imprisonment of a royal will be dropped against Apini, Marshall Stinger, with no further investigation. A commendation will be submitted, pending review, for the exceptional valor of Wise, former Lieutenant Caine, regarding the heroic efforts on behalf of the safety of Her Majesty Jupiter Jones of Earth. And a temporary legal proxy will be created for Her Majesty Jupiter Jones of Earth, to be transferred to Wise, former lieutenant Caine, granting full authority for him to act on her behalf.

_Betas choose,_ he told her, but that doesn’t mean she can’t make some choices of her own.

“I trust Caine,” she says, and puts her wrist to the scanner.

It gives a minute little beep a second later, and Jupiter hands it back to Tsing with hands that are only a little shaky. “There you go,” she says. “Is there anything else I have to take care of before I go?”

“No, I think your majesty completed everything necessary for the time being,” Tsing says, with a slightly sour look at the datapad. “Our crew has coordinated with the local keepers for your family’s return, so all is ready whenever you are.”

“Thank you,” Jupiter says, and she knows she sounds embarrassingly sincere but can’t quite help herself. “Not just for all this, but for, you know, everything.”

“It was my duty,” Tsing says, and then unbends enough to give her a tiny smile. “But you are very welcome. Your majesty.”

###### 

Jupiter ends her third trip in the _Defiant_ much the same way she began it: in the airlock, with Stinger, waiting for Caine.

"You can stop looking at me like a bomb about to go off, you know," she says, when the lingering silence threatens to move from merely awkward to excruciating. "Caine and I talked."

"Wasn't," Stinger starts to defend himself, them catches her disbelieving gaze and huffs a laugh. "Alright, yeah, fair enough. Glad to hear it. You're sorted, then?"

She smiles and tugs at her sleeve, thinking of waking up to the steady thrum of his pulse under her ear, the way he'd curled his arms around her like she's infinitely precious. If all goes well, she'll have a lot of those wake-ups in her future. It's surprisingly sweet to contemplate.

"Yeah. All sorted."

His probing look doesn't quite abate. "And he's… staying here, then?" 

She wobbles her hand in an equivocating gesture. "Eventually, sure. He's got a couple of things to take care of on Orous, first."

"Yeah," Stinger says, and his face clouds briefly. Well, their last trip there didn't end so hot for any of them; she wouldn't be happy for the reminder in his shoes, either. But then his eyes flick over her shoulder and back, the corners of his eyes creasing up in a teasing smile. “Doubt he’ll take too long, knowing Caine. He’s got a couple things to take care of here, too.”

She looks down at the toes of her boots, knowing that she’s grinning like an absolute idiot and not really able to stop herself. “Guess I won’t complain about that, either.”

“Complain about what?” Caine says, from _right behind her,_ and the only reason she doesn’t jump about a foot in the air is that she’s too tired. She does let out a completely undignified squeak of pure surprise before she manages to slap a hand over her mouth, and silently glares at Stinger when he shows every sign of being about to burst into laughter.

“Don’t you dare,” she warns him, and turns around. “God, Caine, you scared the life out of me! How do you walk so quietly in those giant boots?”

“Practice,” he says, looking almost as amused as Stinger, though he at least has the courtesy to look contrite. “Sorry. No idea you didn’t hear me.”

“Bells,” she threatens him. “I’m going to put bells on you.”

Caine blinks slowly. “Isn’t that cats?”

“ _And you,_ ” she says. “So many bells!"

Caine looks like he has a rejoinder to that, but a light touch on his shoulder stops him: Stinger, on his way to the door. “Drop in two,” he says, with a _you two crazy kids_ smugness to his grin that's apparently quite literally universal to parents everywhere. Maybe they hand it out in the maternity ward, who knows. “I’ll go check to make sure all’s well.” He glances over his shoulder to her, catches her gaze and gives her an encouraging nod… and then slips away, leaving them alone.

She takes a deep breath, then lets it out slowly. “Hey.”

A smile tugs at the corners of Caine’s mouth. “Hey,” he says back, quiet. “You ready for this?”

“Not even a little bit.” She huffs out a breath and looks at him sidelong. “Don't tell anyone I said that, okay?"

"My lips are sealed." His hand twitches at his side, like he wants to reach out but can’t allow himself, and she shuffles herself a little closer, hopeful. His twitch of a smile grows stronger, and then he does reach out, wraps his big, warm band around her wrist, under the too-loose cuff of Stinger’s oversized jacket. “I can stay, you know. I don’t need to-”

“Yeah, you do.” She turns her hand in his grip, laces her fingers through his. “It’s important. To me,” she adds, before he can open his mouth to continue the argument from earlier. “Okay? This is what I want." His expression says that's all the argument she really needs to make, but just to seal the deal she adds, "And I don’t know about you lycantants, but we mere humans need… time, to process stuff. I could use a couple days.”

A lot of men - hell, even most men, in her experience - would balk at the idea that their very presence might not magically fulfill every emotional need. But Caine only nods thoughtfully, his hand warm and steady in hers. “You’ve had a trying time,” he says, with that delightfully wry understatement she’s rapidly growing to love.

“Yeeeah, you could definitely say that.” She gives his hand a squeeze. “Just- not too long, okay? Get your wings, get my presents, and get back here.” She tries out a brazen smile, feels it wobble at the edges and then firm up again at the warmth in his eyes. “That’s an order.”

“As your majesty commands,” he murmurs, and dips his head slightly, like some courtier in a period drama. She feels her smile grow wider. “Might I ask what kind of presents you’d prefer? Or would your majesty prefer to be surprised?”

“Drop beam in twenty,” Percadium’s voice says, from the loudspeaker above their heads. “Nineteen. Eighteen.”

“Well, there’s the boots, obviously,” Jupiter says. “But if we’re talking about a wish list…” And she goes to her toes and whispers something in his ear.

When she drops back to her heels, his eyes are wide with surprise and something else: delight, maybe, or wonder. Maybe something like the way her mother said her father used to look at the night sky, like it was full of miracles. The way her mother looked, sometimes, when Jupiter could still get her to talk about her father at all.

“That might be a little out of my price range,” Caine says, while above Percadium counts down, _eleven, ten, nine._

“Well, I thought about that,” Jupiter says, and presses something into Caine’s other hand. “Hang onto that until you get back, huh?”

_Five, four-_

“Yes ma’am,” he says, closing his hand around the pod drive. He smiles down at her for one endless moment, and then they pivot to face the door. “You ready for this?”

_Three, two-_

Jupiter squares up her shoulder blades and lifts her chin as the hatch opens, the light of the transit beam blooming into life just outside the door.

“Actually, I kinda think I am.” She grins up at Caine. “Shall we?”

His hand comes up to rest on her back, just between her shoulder blades, as solid and steady as a bedrock foundation, and twice as reliable when your world comes crashing down. Whatever else happens, she knows that Caine won’t let her fall.

“After you, your majesty,” he says, and they step together into the light.

**Author's Note:**

> Well, I always said that I would write a sequel, and 2018 seemed like a good year to keep my promises. I actually did write most of this in the first few months after the first story, and then stalled out right in the middle of their reunion scene in her cabin. Last summer I managed to make it all the way through her conversation with Captain Tsing, and I was only able to get that one last scene done over the holidays. I don't know if there's much of anyone out there still in this fandom, but if there is... fuckin' cheers to you, seriously. _the instinct to your charm_ was the fic that brought me back to writing after I thought grad school might have burned it out of me forever, and y'all were one of the best fandom experiences I ever had.
> 
> Also, if you're wondering what present Jupiter wanted from Caine... click on to read a bit of an epilogue from Stinger.


End file.
